Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Had Enough Yet?

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from
doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district
members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids
themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a
rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family
farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own
families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the
storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

The new regulations, first proposed
August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the
government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by
independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.